


Everything I can't remember

by macabre_monkey



Category: Animorphs
Genre: Angst, Character Meta, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:33:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre_monkey/pseuds/macabre_monkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tobias angsting about his relationships, post book 54, with all the requisite character meta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything I can't remember

**Author's Note:**

> Sort-of fill for this prompt on the kink meme: _Jake/Tobias, violent hate-sex that turns into tender comfort-sex._
> 
> I was never able to master the art of writing porn in first person, but maybe one day I can do it and post a second part to this. ;_; Sorry anon.

It's not something we talk about. This—thing, whatever it is, between Jake and me. It sure as hell isn’t love, that much I know. At this point, I'm not sure if either of us deserves love, anymore. We've both had our chances, and. Well.

Maybe it's absolution. We're both certainly in need of _that_.

I'm not even sure how it started. Well, I know _how_. Jake came to my meadow one day. It was, what, two, three years after the end? I don't bother keeping track anymore.

Anyway, Jake came to me, needing to talk, he said. To this day, I don't know what possessed me to fly down to meet him instead of taking off. To actually _morph to human_ so I could, what? Scream and yell and pound Jake with my fists?

The really screwed up thing is, I still don't know if I've forgiven him. But at least I don't want to punish him anymore. Jake does a good enough job of that on his own.

If I'm honest with myself, I started noticing Jake a long time before we became Animorphs. Jake was just one of those guys you couldn't help _but_ notice. Smart, strong. Handsome. One of those guys who'd stand up for people who were too weak or afraid to stand up for themselves. One of those guys who always did the right thing, but wasn’t a pushover. I didn't acknowledge it at the time, but I definitely had a crush on Jake.

But then there was Rachel. And Rachel was—well, Jake in female form. But with an extra _something_. Jake was more—I guess you could say he was more accessible. You weren't afraid to just start talking to him. But Rachel was untouchable. Immaculate. You spent one minute around her, and you knew she was too good for you. But it wasn't that she was arrogant. She just seemed to project an aura that said _I am meant for greater things_.

And she was. Rachel almost single handedly saved the world. And then she died.

I retreated into the hawk after the end of the war. That's been my standard method of coping since I became a _nothlit_ ; I've never been all that good at dealing with my emotions. I stayed close to the Hork Bajir colony, in case they ever had any trouble, but I wasn’t interested in interacting with them. I guess Toby knows me well enough to be able to tell me apart from other red tails, though, because she told Cassie how to find me.

Cassie needed me for a favor. She asked me if I remembered the two Andalites who had been stranded on Earth when the Dome Ship fell, Gafinilan and Mertil. And I immediately felt guilty for _not_ remembering before now; I had made a promise to Mertil.

She told me Gafinilan had died, succumbing to his disease shortly before the Yeerks began the final phase of their invasion. Mertil had been living alone all this time, but now that humans were rebuilding the area, he couldn't stay in suburbia anymore. He had no way of keeping up the persona of Henry McClellan, and he didn’t want to go back to the Andalite home world, preferring for his people to remember him and Gafinilan as fallen heroes. He chose to live the rest of his life in solitude on an alien world than go back to a people who would only shun him.

I said yes immediately. Didn't even have to think. It wasn't just my promise, or that it was the right thing, or that I was lonely. It just seemed fitting, somehow. We were both casualties of war, cautionary tales, castoffs. Even if we’d still had homes to go back to, who would want us when we got there?

We didn't talk much at first. Our wounds were still too fresh, and we were both relative unknowns. And Mertil was still painfully shy about being a _vecol_. But slowly, we started to relax around each other. And eventually he confided to me the exact nature of his relationship with Gafinilan.

He explained that Andalite culture didn't exactly _forbid_ same sex unions, but that they were definitely frowned on. Exceptions were made for warriors; he said no one had the heart to deny any of them what comfort they could find. But eventually they would have been expected to settle down with females and have children.

I sensed he was very nervous, revealing that to me. But at the same time, he needed to talk to someone, someone who _got it_ , and god knows I understand what it’s like to love someone, fight at her side, and live with the constant fear that the next battle could her last. To be a freak, an outcast, and have one person finally break down your barriers and love you and believe that you aren’t worthless or pitiable. And then to be alone again—yes. I know exactly what that’s like.

I don’t want to say that Mertil is a better friend than Ax. But there’s something to be said for shared experiences, and for all that we went through together, there are some things Ax just never got about me. Anyway, Ax isn’t here anymore. Mertil is. And—Jake.

I wonder sometimes what Jake thinks of us. Why he does it. If maybe having sex with me is his way of finding comfort, or one of the ways he punishes himself. I wonder if he’s gay or bisexual, and if Cassie knows, and what she’d think about it if she did, and just what the hell happened between them that he can’t get this, whatever he needs, from her, and a million other questions that I will probably never know the answers to, even if I had the guts to ask them.

He never stays long, after. There’s no cuddling, or talking about our feelings. Sometimes he seems like he’s on the verge of tears, but he manages to suppress them.

Maybe I _have_ forgiven Jake. There were times when I was deliberately cruel, when I’d tell him I hated him, throw what he did to Rachel in his face, sometimes in the middle of sex. And he wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t stop. God, we really are fucked up. But I haven’t done that in a while, or even felt like I wanted to. The last few times, I think I was even starting to feel sorry for him. Like I wanted to comfort him—and god, that is _really_ fucked up. And scary.

It’s scary to think that I am giving Jake something he needs, even if I don’t know exactly what it is. Because maybe this isn’t love, but we were friends. Comrades in arms. And I don’t think I will ever accept the necessity of what happened, but it happened. And we won.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe Jake just needs to know that it was worth it. That _I_ think it was worth it. Intellectually, yes, I have to admit that any one life, any one of _our_ lives, was worth saving our planet. All of our sacrifices: me being trapped in hawk morph; Jake having to live with his brother knowing he was taken by the enemy, and not daring to try and save him because that would blow our cover, the wounds, the scars, physical and emotional; all of it was worth it. I know it’s true. And I hate it. I hate that Jake knew it too, and I hate that he was able to make that call, to see the bigger picture, and know what needed to be done, even if it meant he was damning himself.

But I can’t change it. I can only keep living my life. And maybe start being a friend again, a _true_ friend, to Jake. I know that’s what Rachel would want. She was never much for wallowing in self pity, even though she had as much reason to as the rest of us. And if she were here, she’d have done something long before now to shake him out of his funk. Both of us.


End file.
